great elegance of expression. His crime is, that he found the country
bare of trees, and he has stated the fact. This, Mr. Boswell, in his
tour to the Hebrides, has told us, was resented, by his countrymen, with
anger inflamed to rancour; but he admits that there are few trees on the
east side of Scotland. Mr. Pennant, in his tour, says, that, in some
parts of the eastern side of the country, he saw several large
plantations of pine, planted by gentlemen near their seats; and, in this
respect, such a laudable spirit prevails, that, in another half-century,
it never shall be said, "To spy the nakedness of the land are you come."
Johnson could not wait for that half-century, and, therefore, mentioned
things as he found them. If, in any thing, he has been mistaken, he has
made a fair apology, in the last paragraph of his book, avowing with
candour: "That he may have been surprised by modes of life, and
appearances of nature, that are familiar to men of wider survey, and
more varied conversation. Novelty and ignorance must always be
reciprocal: and he is conscious that his thoughts on national manners,
are the thoughts of one who has seen but little."

The poems of Ossian made a part of Johnson's inquiry, during his
residence in Scotland and the Hebrides. On his return to England,
November, 1773, a storm seemed to be gathering over his head; but the
cloud never burst, and the thunder never fell.--Ossian, it is well
known, was presented to the public, as a translation from the Erse; but
that this was a fraud, Johnson declared, without hesitation. "The Erse,"
he says, "was always oral only, and never a written language. The Welsh
and the Irish were more cultivated. In Erse, there was not in the world
a single manuscript a hundred years old. Martin, who, in the last
century, published an account of the Western Islands, mentions Irish,
but never Erse manuscripts, to be found in the islands in his time. The
bards could not read; if they could, they might, probably, have written.